Best Epidemic Movies & TV Shows

Twenty years after modern civilization has been destroyed, Joel, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle Ellie, a 14-year-old girl, out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey, as they both must traverse the United States and depend on each other for survival.

Los Angeles. 1983. A storm is coming and its name is crack. Set against the infancy of the crack cocaine epidemic and its ultimate radical impact on the culture as we know it, the story follows numerous characters on a violent collision course.

A dance musical that explores the juxtaposition of several segments of 1980s life and society in New York: the ball culture world, the rise of the luxury Trump-era universe and the downtown social and literary scene.

In the early 1990s in New York, during the height of the crack cocaine epidemic, a visionary musician named Bobby Diggs aka The RZA begins to form a super group of a dozen young, black men, who will eventually rise to become one of the unlikeliest success stories in American music history.

One morning, the high school student Takashi Komuro enjoys the silence at school when he's suddenly interrupted by strange noises and a shaky-legged person who tries to enter the school grounds. Subsequently, several teachers come to the school gate to shoo the person away. All of a sudden, a teacher is bitten by the person and within seconds the school campus becomes a place of violence, blood, death and undead zombies. Takashi, shocked by the scenery, runs for his life to save his schoolmates and childhood love, Rei Miyamoto. The struggle for survival has just begun…

The story of how one company triggered the worst drug epidemic in American history. Look into the epicenter of America's struggle with opioid addiction, from a distressed Virginia mining community, to the hallways of the DEA, and to the opulence of "one percenter" Big Pharma Manhattan.

A searing indictment of Big Pharma and the political operatives and government regulations that enable over-production, reckless distribution and abuse of synthetic opiates.

Underneath the surface of a sleepy country town a brutal drug war rages as rival crime syndicates battle to control the heroin supply thats fueling a rural epidemic. When Sandra, a young documentary filmmaker, arrives in town committed to exposing the town's dark secrets, an unstable situation turns explosive. For Sandra is the long lost daughter of Devon Green, a savage enforcer for a drug kingpin as powerful as he is cruel. As she delves deeper into the desperate underworld of addiction, greed, and power, Sandra becomes a pawn in a violent drug war. Will Devon stay loyal to his bosses or defend the daughter he never knew? Are blood ties stronger than the lust for money and power?

The Utopia Experiments is a legendary graphic novel shrouded in mystery. When a group of strangers find themselves in possession of an original manuscript, their lives suddenly and brutally implode.

A reluctant drug dealer strives to elevate his friends' lives while the addictive forces of an ignorant Oxycontin prescription corrodes his own.

Dr. Eli Watt, a widower, comes to a small town, considering himself a failure in his attempt to have a meaningful career in New York. He raises his son Jimmy as well as Letty, a baby whose mother has died in childbirth and whose father blames Watt and abandons the child. Watt dreams of returning to do research studies, but always something gets in the way: an epidemic, his children's needs, or the needs of his generally ungrateful patients. Only with the passing years does he come to find that his future isn't over and his past isn't quite the failure he believed.

A chronicle of five friends during a decade in which everything changed, including the rise of AIDS.

On a post-apocalyptic Earth, a robot, built to protect the life of his dying creator's beloved dog, learns about life, love, friendship, and what it means to be human.

In a Mars base, the inhabitants are being infected by a mysterious water creature which takes over its victims. The Doctor is thrust into the middle of this catastrophe, knowing a larger one is waiting around the corner.

Survivors is a British post-apocalyptic fiction television series devised by Terry Nation and produced by Terence Dudley at the BBC from 1975 to 1977. It concerns the plight of a group of people who have survived an accidentally released plague – referred to as "The Death" – that kills nearly the entire human population of the planet.

The story of the onset of the HIV-AIDS crisis in New York City in the early 1980s, taking an unflinching look at the nation's sexual politics as gay activists and their allies in the medical community fight to expose the truth about the burgeoning epidemic to a city and nation in denial.

When a spoiled English girl living in 19th century India loses both parents in a cholera epidemic, she is sent back to England to live in a country mansion. The lord is a strange old man-- frail and deformed, immensely kind but so melancholy. She wishes to discover what has caused him so much sorrow and to bring joy back to the household. It all must have something to do with the screams and wails which echo through the house at night and no one wants to talk about.

Alexander, a journalist, philosopher and retired actor, celebrates a birthday with friends and family when it is announced that nuclear war has begun.

On the cusp of his 30th birthday, Jonathon Larson, a promising young theater composer, navigates love, friendship, and the pressures of life as an artist in New York City.

This follow-up to the 1989 documentary ONE YEAR IN A LIFE OF CRIME revisits three of the original subjects in New Jersey during a five-year period in the 1990s. We share in their triumphs and setbacks as they navigate lives of poverty, drug abuse, AIDS, and petty crime.

A docudrama depicting a hypothetical nuclear attack on Britain. After backing the film's development, the BBC refused to air it, publicly stating "the effect of the film has been judged by the BBC to be too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting." It debuted in theaters in 1966 and went on to great acclaim, but remained unseen on British television until 1985.

After a teenage girl's perplexing suicide, a classmate receives a series of tapes that unravel the mystery of her tragic choice.

The story of the legalization and subsequent rise of the porn industry in New York’s Times Square from the early ’70s through the mid ’80s, exploring the rough-and-tumble world that existed there until the rise of HIV, the violence of the cocaine epidemic and the renewed real estate market ended the bawdy turbulence of the area.

In 2027, in a chaotic world in which humans can no longer procreate, a former activist agrees to help transport a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary at sea, where her child's birth may help scientists save the future of humankind.

An American oil company representative almost sacrifices his marriage for his career.

In 1985, two couples' relationships dissolve amidst the backdrop of Reagan era politics, the spreading AIDS epidemic, and a rapidly changing social and political climate.

In the year 2035, convict James Cole reluctantly volunteers to be sent back in time to discover the origin of a deadly virus that wiped out nearly all of the earth's population and forced the survivors into underground communities. But when Cole is mistakenly sent to 1990 instead of 1996, he's arrested and locked up in a mental hospital. There he meets psychiatrist Dr. Kathryn Railly, and patient Jeffrey Goines, the son of a famous virus expert, who may hold the key to the mysterious rogue group, the Army of the 12 Monkeys, thought to be responsible for unleashing the killer disease.

Shaun lives a supremely uneventful life, which revolves around his girlfriend, his mother, and, above all, his local pub. This gentle routine is threatened when the dead return to life and make strenuous attempts to snack on ordinary Londoners.

After his son's tragic death, a Louisiana pharmacist goes to extremes to expose the rampant corruption behind the opioid addiction crisis.

A new infection that simply makes people feel happy is treated as a threat by the authorities while its "victims" work to spread it to others.

During an ever-growing epidemic of zombies that have risen from the dead, two Philadelphia SWAT team members, a traffic reporter, and his television-executive girlfriend seek refuge in a secluded shopping mall.

After killing a prison guard, convict Robert Stroud faces life imprisonment in solitary confinement. Driven nearly mad by loneliness and despair, Stroud's life gains new meaning when he happens upon a helpless baby sparrow in the exercise yard and nurses it back to health. Despite having only a third grade education, Stroud goes on to become a renowned ornithologist and achieves a greater sense of freedom and purpose behind bars than most people find in the outside world.

A high concept thriller that tells the story of Dr. Ephraim Goodweather, the head of the Center for Disease Control Canary Team in New York City. He and his team are called upon to investigate a mysterious viral outbreak with hallmarks of an ancient and evil strain of vampirism. As the strain spreads, Eph, his team, and an assembly of everyday New Yorkers, wage war for the fate of humanity itself.

In 17th-century France, Father Urbain Grandier seeks to protect the city of Loudun from the corrupt establishment of Cardinal Richelieu. Hysteria occurs within the city when he is accused of witchcraft by a sexually repressed nun.

The provocative story of Cole, a time traveler from a decimated future in a high-stakes race against the clock. Utilizing a dangerous and untested method of time travel, he journeys from 2043 to the present day on a mission to locate and eradicate the source of a deadly plague that will all but annihilate the human race.

Katniss Everdeen has returned home safe after winning the 74th Annual Hunger Games along with fellow tribute Peeta Mellark. Winning means that they must turn around and leave their family and close friends, embarking on a "Victor's Tour" of the districts. Along the way Katniss senses that a rebellion is simmering, but the Capitol is still very much in control as President Snow prepares the 75th Annual Hunger Games (The Quarter Quell) - a competition that could change Panem forever.

Different experts make a stand against today's putatively criminal and harmful health system, focusing on Anthony Fauci and his role in the shaping of the AIDS and COVID-19 epidemics. The Real Anthony Fauci - based on the book by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The life of internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin is told through her slideshows, intimate interviews, ground-breaking photography, and rare footage of her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the overdose crisis.

This timely exploration of Hollywood and LGBTQ+ identity examines the life of legendary actor Rock Hudson, from his public "ladies' man" persona to his private life as a gay man.

The third installment of the Sarah trilogy provides a glorious and touching story of a family drawn together by adversity. On a cold winter day a stranger shows up at the farm. He is slow to reveal his identity. When they find out he is Jacobs father, John Witting, thought long ago dead, hard questions about the past are difficult to get answered.

With the help of government-issued pamphlets, an elderly British couple build a shelter and prepare for an impending nuclear attack, unaware that times and the nature of war have changed from their romantic memories of World War II.

Trapped on her family’s isolated farm, Pearl must tend to her ailing father under the bitter and overbearing watch of her devout mother. Lusting for a glamorous life like she’s seen in the movies, Pearl’s ambitions, temptations, and repressions collide.

A doctor's already-shaky marriage is tested to an even greater extent when he has to contend with a smallpox epidemic.

A powerful portrait of tribal members and their communities within Big Horn County, Montana battling an epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) that has been prevalent since colonization. This docuseries examines the circumstances surrounding many of these cases, told solely through the perspectives of those involved: Native families, Native journalists, and local law enforcement officers.

An outcast half-wolf risks his life to prevent a deadly epidemic from ravaging Nome, Alaska.

With their father away as a chaplain in the Civil War, Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy grow up with their mother in somewhat reduced circumstances. They are a close family who inevitably have their squabbles and tragedies. But the bond holds even when, later, male friends start to become a part of the household.

A British medical doctor fights a cholera outbreak in a small Chinese village, while also being trapped at home in a loveless marriage to an unfaithful wife.

“White Boy Rick”, as he was called, was a novelty: A white teenager seemingly running a major inner-city drug operation. In May of 1987, 17-year-old Richard Wershe Jr. was charged with a non-violent, juvenile drug offense. By the time of his arrest he was already a Detroit legend, frequently making front-page headlines and leading the local television news. In this film, gangsters, hit men, journalists and federal agents struggle to explain why he remains in prison at nearly 50 years old. The possible explanation is more stunning than the crimes Wershe was alleged to have committed.

Twenty-eight days after a killer virus was accidentally unleashed from a British research facility, a small group of London survivors are caught in a desperate struggle to protect themselves from the infected. Carried by animals and humans, the virus turns those it infects into homicidal maniacs -- and it's absolutely impossible to contain.

Robert Neville is a scientist who was unable to stop the spread of the terrible virus that was incurable and man-made. Immune, Neville is now the last human survivor in what is left of New York City and perhaps the world. For three years, Neville has faithfully sent out daily radio messages, desperate to find any other survivors who might be out there. But he is not alone.